In Kiangsu and Chekiang provinces, very simple methods are followed in
producing cotton-seed oil. The seeds are heated, packed into a barrel
and pressure is exerted by driving wedges under a hoop. Meal is made in
buffalo-driven stone mills. These methods will soon change with modern
industrial organization and the importation of our machinery.
At Kiating in the south of Szechuen province are the remarkable gas and
salt wells, the former supplying fuel to evaporate the brine of the
latter. The industry is immense, there being many thousands of wells in
the opulent Min River valley of Central China. The salt is a government
monopoly, and may be retained as such in the new financing, as in some
features of national revenue French and Japanese methods, instead
of American and British, may be followed. In that case, the federal
government would be the purchaser of the new machinery.
Only north of the Yangtze River are ponies seen. Szechuen province
has the most beautiful, many of them being black. The Mongolian pony
of the provinces farther north has a heavier body and a worse temper.
Japan has commenced the stocking of horses, and China will do likewise,
when she widens her roads, and increases the size of her farms so as
to make an animal useful, the men displaced from employment going to
the new mines and railways. Moreover, China is at her wits’ end for
fertilizer, which stock will furnish. She has been at her wits’ end
for fuel and has been burning the field stubble and straw needed for
compost. Now coal will save for her this land enricher.
The fine guild houses in the various cities are erected by subscription
and are put in charge of a caretaker. Meeting halls, showrooms,
restaurants, theater and sleeping quarters are provided. It is the
same as if the Ohio men put up a guild house in New York, and the New
York men put up a guild house in Cincinnati; or if Edinburgh traders
erected a guild house in London, and London men reciprocated. It
was the reciprocal working of these guilds which showed the Chinese
that assemblies and parliaments were feasible, and next to the
foreign-trained students, the guild men have been foremost in China’s
representative political bodies. Here are some of the practical
proverbs that are hung up in the guild rooms:
“He who keeps everlastingly at it will grow legs long enough to jump
the highest mountain.”
“When there’s fire a distant lake is not so good as a near bucketful.”
“Gambling is not good, but still I have known one who risked his last
penny and got his first pound.”
“You don’t need to thrash a fast horse, or yell at a wise man.”
“Trust an orange-seller to say that his oranges are sweet, and a
shoemaker to say that his shoes don’t leak.”
“A smiling salesman enhances his wares.”
“A little attention to the cutting end of a chisel makes necessary only
a little attention to the striking end.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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